Global Warming -- from Sun?

Philosophy Forums Science, Technology, and Math
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us.f524.mail.yahoo.com/ym/ShowLe … S@Search&&

Changes on Neptune Link Sun and Global Warming

Skeptics of manmade global warming have found further support in research linking solar output with the planet Neptune’s brightness and temperatures on Earth.
The findings appeared in a recent issue of Geophysical Research Letters. The authors of the article, H.B. Hammel and G.W. Lockwood from the Space Science Institute in Colorado and the Lowell Observatory in Arizona, note that measurements of visible light from Neptune have been taken at the Observatory since 1950.
Those measurements indicate that Neptune has been getting brighter since around 1980. And infrared measurements of the planet since 1980 show that Neptune has been warming steadily as well.
The researchers plotted on a graph the changes in visible light from Neptune over the past half-century, changes in temperatures on Earth during that period, and changes in total solar irradiance.
The results: The correlation between solar irradiance and Neptune’s brightness was nearly perfect; so was the correlation between changes on Earth and solar output, according to a report on the research appearing on World Climate Report, a climate change blog.
“When the sun is more energetic and putting out more energy, the Earth tends to warm up, and when the sun cools down, so does the Earth,” World Climate Report notes. “The Hammel and Lockwood article reveals that the same is true out at Neptune — when the sun’s energy increases, Neptune seems to warm up and get brighter . . .
“How is it possible that the Earth’s temperature is so highly correlated with brightness variations from Neptune? The news from Neptune comes to us just weeks after an article was published showing that Mars has warmed recently as well.
“If nothing else, we have certainly learned recently that planets undergo changes in their mean temperature, and while we can easily blame human activity here on the Earth, blaming humans for the recent warming on Mars and Neptune would be an astronomical stretch, to say the least.”

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cnn.com/2007/TECH/space/06/2 … index.html

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Jupiter is changing its stripes, perhaps because its seasons are changing, scientists reported Thursday.

A band of white clouds above Jupiter’s equator in March.

1 of 2 The orbiting Hubble Space Telescope is capturing some of the most dramatic atmospheric changes ever documented, the team at NASA and the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore reported.

White areas of the planet’s cloud bands are turning brown and brownish areas are lightening up, the researchers said.

“It does this every once in a while,” planetary scientist Amy Simon-Miller of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center said in a telephone interview.

“Jupiter doesn’t stay the same color all the time. We are just lucky – it is going through what we call a global upheaval, meaning the belts and bands are changing color at the same time.”

The changes might be due to seasonal effects, Simon-Miller said.

“Jupiter’s year is much longer than an Earth year – it’s 12 years,” she said.

Changes in the heat from the sun may be affecting the gas giant’s atmosphere, she said.

As planets orbit, their angle from the sun varies, changing how directly the sun’s rays hit and in turn causing the seasons. E-mail to a friend

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There is a Dane, I forget his name, who is proposing just that. It isn’t well accepted by other climatologists right now, though.

Since I’m not an expert, I’ll stick with the official story for now.

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Is the first article a good argument?

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Here’s another blog which may well answer a lot of these questions.

curezone.com/blogs/m.asp?f=1207&i=2

It would appear that whilst we are IN this galaxy, we are not OF this galaxy. Very interesting.

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I have now found a more authoritative site which denies that we are not OF the Milky Way. I would suggest, however, that the fact that we are crossing paths with another galaxy, or at least the remains of, may provide a mechanism, in addition to the suns variable output, whereby our weather and climate are more variable than might otherwise be expected.

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That’s proof enough for me.

But let’s say that humanity is still doing the right thing, if they want to reduce the rate of global-warming by reducing their greenhouse gases?

I also remember someone saying water-vapor is far more a greenhouse gas than carbon emissions are.

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Looking at some of those graphs it does seem pretty convincing. But even the authors state that:
“Although correlations between Neptune’s brightness and Earth’s temperature anomaly—and between Neptune and two models of solar variability—are visually compelling, at this time they are not statistically significant due to the limited degrees of freedom of the various time series.”

agu.org/pubs/crossref/2007/2 … 8764.shtml

and really we don’t know enough about what is going on with Neptune to really correct for everything. The most direct measure of whether the intensity of solar radiation is increasing seems to be coming from the satellites. Unfortunately there was a gap in the measurements which has lead to two interpretations, one is saying that the solar radiation has stayed constant since the 70’s, another that it has increased slightly.

In any case it seems pretty clear that CO2 causes global warming, if some percentage of the warming we have seen is from the Sun that just means we have more of a problem to deal with.

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news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6290228.stm

Last Updated: Tuesday, 10 July 2007, 23:00 GMT 00:00 UK

‘No sun link’ to climate change
By Richard Black
BBC Environment Correspondent

Scientists have been measuring the frequency of solar flares
A new scientific study concludes that changes in the Sun’s output cannot be causing modern-day climate change.
It shows that for the last 20 years, the Sun’s output has declined, yet temperatures on Earth have risen.

It also shows that modern temperatures are not determined by the Sun’s effect on cosmic rays, as has been claimed.

Writing in the Royal Society’s journal Proceedings A, the researchers say cosmic rays may have affected climate in the past, but not the present.

“This should settle the debate,” said Mike Lockwood from the UK’s Rutherford-Appleton Laboratory, who carried out the new analysis together with Claus Froehlich from the World Radiation Center in Switzerland.

Dr Lockwood initiated the study partially in response to the TV documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle, broadcast on Britain’s Channel Four earlier this year, which featured the cosmic ray hypothesis.

“All the graphs they showed stopped in about 1980, and I knew why, because things diverged after that,” he told the BBC News website.

“You can’t just ignore bits of data that you don’t like,” he said.

Warming trend

The scientists’ main approach on this new analysis was simple; to look at solar output and cosmic ray intensity over the last 30-40 years, and compare those trends with the graph for global average surface temperature, which has risen by about 0.4C over the period.

The Sun varies on a cycle of about 11 years between periods of high and low activity.

But that cycle comes on top of longer-term trends; and most of the 20th Century saw a slight but steady increase in solar output.

But in about 1985, that trend appears to have reversed, with solar output declining.

This paper re-enforces the fact that the warming in the last 20 to 40 years can’t have been caused by solar activity

Dr Piers Forster

Yet this period has seen temperatures rise as fast as, if not faster than, at any time during the previous 100 years.

“This paper re-enforces the fact that the warming in the last 20 to 40 years can’t have been caused by solar activity,” said Dr Piers Forster from Leeds University, a leading contributor to this year’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment of climate science.

Cosmic relief

The IPCC’s February summary report concluded that greenhouse gases were about 13 times more responsible than solar changes for rising global temperatures.

But the organisation was criticised in some quarters for not taking into account the cosmic ray hypothesis, developed among others by Henrik Svensmark and Eigil Friis-Christensen of the Danish National Space Center.

Their theory holds that cosmic rays help clouds to form by providing tiny particles around which water vapour can condense. Overall, clouds cool the Earth.

During periods of active solar activity, cosmic rays are partially blocked by the Sun’s more intense magnetic field. Cloud formation diminishes, and the Earth warms.

Mike Lockwood’s analysis appears to have put a large, probably fatal nail in this intriguing and elegant hypothesis.

He said: "I do think there is a cosmic ray effect on cloud cover. It works in clean maritime air where there isn’t much else for water vapour to condense around.

“It might even have had a significant effect on pre-industrial climate. But you cannot apply it to what we’re seeing now, because we’re in a completely different ball game.”

Drs Svensmark and Friis-Christensen could not be reached for comment.